Chapter 24 #2
Elizabeth stepped to the desk and pulled one of the books from the neat stack there—thin, brittle, its spine repaired with careful thread.
She laid it open, turning to a marked page with no hesitation.
“Why this book?” she demanded, tapping the margin.
“And why this one beside it, and the one beneath? You have had some of them for longer than I have been alive, and others you seemed to have purchased with a purpose of some sort. You gave them to me when I was ill, and you did not say why. You let me read them as though they were harmless.” She lifted her gaze. “They are not.”
Mr Bennet’s mouth curved, not in amusement. “They are paper and ink, Lizzy.”
“Do not,” she said sharply. “Do not make sport of this. Not now.”
He frowned and drew the handkerchief back out of his pocket, and this time, he slowly wiped his spectacles. “Very well.”
He eased himself into the chair opposite her, the desk between them. For a moment, he did not speak. Then he reached out and turned the book a fraction, so the light fell more cleanly on the page. “I do not know what it means.”
Elizabeth crossed her arms. “That is not possible. You cannot be entirely ignorant.”
“It is entirely possible,” he replied. “It has been my chief talent, these many years.”
She shook her head. “You gathered them.”
“I inherited some. Acquired others. When something seemed to echo what I already had, I added it to my collection.” He shrugged. “A habit, perhaps. Or a failing.”
“A pattern, you mean.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “That, too.”
“You meant something,” she said. “When you put those books into my hands. You do not do anything by accident, Papa.”
Papa glanced up from the page he had been pretending to read. The pretence fell away at once; he folded the paper neatly and set it aside.
“I do a great many things by accident,” he said mildly. “I merely prefer not to advertise them.”
“That will not do.”
“No,” he agreed. “It rarely does.”
He leaned back in his chair and regarded her over steepled fingers, his expression thoughtful rather than amused.
“You are unwell,” he said at last. “Not dangerously so, despite your mother’s enthusiasm.
And you are observant enough to notice patterns where others might be content with convenience.
That does not oblige me to invent explanations. ”
“I am not asking you to invent,” Elizabeth said. “I am asking you to tell me what you know.”
He smiled faintly. “Ah. That is a different thing.”
She waited.
Papa rose and crossed to the shelves behind her. He did not take anything down at first. He only ran his fingers along the spines, as though reacquainting himself with old friends he had not meant to call upon.
“What I know,” he said, “is that books are safer than conclusions. They permit one to be curious without being committed.”
Elizabeth turned toward him. “That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I am prepared to give you just now.”
She frowned. “You have noticed it.”
“I am old, not blind. But pray, elaborate, in case I have missed something.”
“The headaches. The way I feel when Mr Collins speaks. And—” She hesitated. “When Mr Darcy is mentioned. I know you saw that.”
His brows lifted. “Did I?”
“Do not trifle, Papa. You pointed that coincidence out before I had even made the connection.”
He sighed and dropped his hand from the shelf. “Very well. I have no explanation about Mr Darcy, but I have noticed that you are more yourself when Mr Collins is not imposing himself upon the room. I have also noticed that you appear less so when he is. I require no philosophy to account for that.”
“That is not fair.”
“Nor is Mr Collins,” her father said dryly. “And yet he persists.”
Elizabeth crossed her arms. “Then you do not think there is anything… particular about him?”
Mr Bennet hesitated. Just long enough.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that he is a man who arrived pre-equipped with certainty and has never misplaced it since. Such people are tiresome. Occasionally harmful. Rarely interesting.”
“That is not what I mean.”
“Well? Be more specific, Lizzy.”
She pressed her lips together. “What do you know of his family?”
That did it.
Papa’s mouth curved—not in amusement, but in something more reluctant. He returned to his chair and sat, folding his hands upon the desk as though arranging his thoughts before allowing them speech.
“Very little,” he said. “And most of that second-hand.”
Elizabeth waited again.
“His mother,” her father went on, “was a cousin of my own, once removed and twice regretted. She was thought… delicate. High spirits, they called it at first. A less charitable description was ‘troubled.’ She was married young to a man with a keen eye for property and a temper equal to it.”
“And she was well?”
Papa shrugged. “Define well. She disappeared from family life with remarkable efficiency. Letters arrived. Perfectly sensible ones. Polite. Domestic. She seemed, on paper, entirely reconciled to her circumstances.”
“And in truth?”
“That was less clear. There were whispers. Accusations. A quarrel between her husband and Collins’ father—my cousin—that ended all communication.
Collins insists she died. Others believed she was…
placed somewhere quieter.” He waved a hand.
“It is many years past. No one saw fit to pursue the matter.”
Elizabeth stared at him. “You say this as though it were nothing.”
“I say it as though it were no longer actionable,” he replied. “One cannot rescue a woman twenty years too late, nor indict a son for accepting the version of events most convenient to him.”
She swallowed. “And you think it has no bearing on me.”
“I think,” Papa said carefully, “that families are full of unhappy stories if one is inclined to look for them. I do not propose to burden you with every skeleton rattling about in our relations’ cupboards.”
Elizabeth turned away, restless now, crossing the small distance to the window and back again. “Then why the books?”
Her father rose once more, selected a slim volume from the shelf, and placed it in her hands.
“Because,” he said, “you will not be satisfied with being told there is nothing to see. And because if you must worry, I would rather you do so with poetry than with conjecture.”
She looked down at the cover. “You are evading.”
“I am postponing,” he corrected. “There is a difference.”
Elizabeth met his gaze. “Do you think I am in danger?”
Papa chuckled. “Mr Collins is a danger to no one, least of all himself.”
“Do you think I am imagining things?”
“No. You would conjure something more inventive.”
She wagged the book in his face. “Papa, I am being serious. Do you think there is something wrong with me?”
He smiled then—softly, unmistakably. “Absolutely not.”
She exhaled, trying to pass back the book she was holding. “And your advice, the best you have to offer, is for me to just… read.”
“I advise you,” he said, pressing the book gently back into her hands, “to be curious without being frightened. To observe without concluding. And to remember that discomfort is not prophecy.”
She hesitated. “And if the books suggest otherwise?”
“Then,” he said lightly, “we shall discuss them. Over tea. Preferably after you have slept.”
Elizabeth did not smile, but she nodded. “Very well. I shall read.”
“I thought you might.”
As she turned toward the door, her father spoke again—almost casually.
“And Lizzy?”
She paused.
“If any book makes you feel worse rather than wiser,” he said, “bring it back down. We shall put it away.”
She inclined her head and left him there, the book held carefully in both hands.